Brewin pleases as more funds bolster profits

Michael Bow is a reporter at City A.M. covering private equity, funds, investments and asset managers. He can be reached on michael.bow@cityam.com

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Michael Bow

BREWIN Dolphin, the 250 year-old investment manager, yesterday recorded a £43m pre-tax profit after excluding redundancy and other exceptional costs.

The profit jump – an increase of eight per cent – was underpinned by an income of close to £270m over the past 12 months.

As one of the City’s oldest investment houses, investors have been keen to turn over their portfolios to the firm to manage.

Overall, funds under management shot up to £25.9bn, up 7.9 per cent from a year ago, led by a growth in its discretionary funds.

The firm’s higher revenues were helped along by more fees coming into the firm, with recurring fee income – a cornerstone of asset manager income –increasing to 68 per cent of total revenue streams.

The niche investment firm, which celebrates its 250th birthday this year, also said it had used its cash pile to complete a multimillion pound IT upgrade this year. It spent £23.8m improving software and hardware, which helped see the amount of cash on its balance sheet fall to £47.8m.